14 killed at Iraqi police chief's house

Unidentified gunmen attacked the house of an Iraqi police chief in Baqouba, north-east of Baghdad, killing his wife, two brothers and 11 guards, Diyala provincial police reported.

The attackers also abducted two sons and two daughters of police chief Col. Ali Ahmed, police said. Ahmed wasn’t home at the time, they said. The children’s ages and other details of the attack were not immediately available.

Diyala province, and especially the city of Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, has been torn by violence in recent weeks as al-Qaida in Iraq and affiliated groups have battled Iraqi security forces, the US military and some local insurgent groups that have turned against al-Qaida.

Also today in southern Iraq, a parked minibus exploded at a bus terminal in the town of Qurna, and a hospital director said at least 16 people were killed and 32 wounded.

A witness, taxi driver Salim Abdul-Hussein, 35, said the blast damaged the terminal and many cars and surrounding shops, striking an area crowded each morning with farmers coming to town to shop and sell their produce and animals in Qurna, 225 miles south of Baghdad.

Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hammadi, police chief in Basra, the provincial capital 60 miles to the south, said a minibus loaded with rockets, ammunition, C4 explosives and benzene blew up and caused a nearby car to explode.

Police cordoned off the area and arrested two Egyptian suspects, he said.